The decision by Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred to grant a posthumous pardon to Pete Rose, who was “permanently” banned from the game in 1989 for gambling, has been largely attributed to a pressure campaign by President Trump. There’s truth in that, although we wonder if it’s the whole truth.

The president did indeed urge baseball to “get off its fat, lazy ass” and elect Rose to the Hall of Fame. Trump has a soft spot for scoundrels, being one himself, and Rose — the game’s all-time hit leader, who died last September — was certainly of that company.

He earned a lifetime ban from the game for committing baseball’s cardinal sin, betting on games as a player and a manager with the Cincinnati Reds and consistently lying about it over the years. He also served time for tax evasion, and when accusations surfaced that he had had sex with a girl who was age 14 or 15, he responded that he thought she was 16 and, “Who cares what happened 50 years ago?”

Not much of anybody, as Manfred’s writ of clemency demonstrates. But the commissioner who negotiated the deal that imposed the ban in 1989, former Yale president A. Bartlett Giamatti, did care, because he understood that gambling fatally undermines the integrity of baseball and any other sport. If you can’t depend on the outcome of any sports competition being on the up-and-up, what’s the point of watching?

His son, Marcus Giamatti, told The Boston Globe before Manfred’s decision was announced that, “My father believed that no one person is above the game. And were he here today, he would maintain that the institution of baseball must stand up to outside influences, political influences, influences that are not in the best interests of the game. Without integrity, the game of baseball will cease to exist. Without integrity, how will fans ever trust the purity of the game itself ever again?”

Manfred, who is hardly the first, nor the last, executive to abandon principle under pressure from Trump, also reinstated 16 other deceased individuals who were permanently banned, including Shoeless Joe Jackson and others involved in the notorious 1919 Black Sox scandal who allegedly conspired to lose the World Series. The commissioner’s stated rationale was that “permanent ineligibility” ends with death, because “a person no longer with us cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game.”

This is manifestly nonsense. Reinstatement sends a message to everyone currently involved in the game that gambling transgressions will ultimately not count against you. And as John Dowd, the lawyer whose investigative report resulted in Rose’s ban, says, “Reputation survives death.” (Otherwise, Richard Nixon would be eligible for the presidential hall of fame, if there were one.)

The only saving grace is that none of those reinstated will get a free pass into the Hall of Fame, despite Trump’s lobbying. That will be decided in due course by the 16-member Classic Baseball Era Committee, made up of former players, executives and media members. We hope they take the matter more seriously than did Manfred, who simply passed the buck to them.

We are bound to wonder in the end, though, whether Trump’s influence was the only thing at work here. After years of pronouncing gambling anathema, MLB has entered into lucrative partnerships recently with legal gambling companies, as have other professional sports leagues. It is virtually impossible to watch the broadcast of any baseball game these days without being repeatedly assaulted by come-ons to place bets from DraftKings, FanDuel and the like. What are fans supposed to think of this blurring of lines between prohibited and promoted gambling?

No good can come of this. Eroding the barriers between the acceptable and the proscribed is happening throughout society with unhappy results. Sports is a great place to redraw a bright line between the two.